What Murmurent creates

Murmurent creates a small set of git repositories and local files that work together: some are shared across everyone using Murmurent, some belong to one lab, and some live only on your own machine.

Item	Where it lives	What it holds	Owned by
hallettmiket/murmurent	GitHub (public)	the commons: agents, rules, hooks, MCP servers, CLI, dashboard, shared across the centre	the centre; everyone clones it
hallettmiket/murmurent_public	GitHub (public)	the global directory of institutions running Murmurent, plus registrar contacts for join requests	the centre; public
<your-org>/murmurent_lab_mgmt_<lab>	GitHub (private)	your lab or core's governance repo: roster, project registry (cert_projects/), inventory, the lab oracle (curated shared findings), audit records	the PI; members get read access
<you>/murmurent_vault	GitHub (private)	your personal vault: oracle/ (your findings), lab-notebook/ (daily notes), murmurent_data/ (reference files: PDFs, spreadsheets), maps-legends/ (your vault index)	you, alone
~/repos/murmurent (~/repos is your repositories folder unless you chose another; murmurent config repos-root shows it)	your machine	the working clone of the commons; ~/.claude/agents and ~/.claude/rules symlink into it	you, per machine
~/repos/murmurent_lab_mgmt_<lab>	your machine	the working clone of your lab's governance repo	you, per machine
~/.claude/agents/, ~/.claude/rules/, ~/.claude/skills/	your machine	symlinks into the commons clone, put there by scripts/setup.sh	you, per machine
~/.claude/settings.json	your machine	registered hooks (raw_guard, protected_paths, …) and MCP servers (murmurent-oracle, murmurent-inventory, …)	you, per machine
~/.claude/agent-memory/	your machine	per-agent working memory	you, per machine
~/.claude/murmurent-preferences.yaml	your machine	your personal preference profile (agent defaults you've overridden)	you, per machine
~/.murmurent/machine.yaml	your machine	this machine's Murmurent configuration	you, per machine
~/.murmurent/keys/	your machine	your cryptographic identity key material	you, per machine
~/.murmurent/ identity/membership cards	your machine	your signed identity certificate and any lab/core membership cards you've imported	you, per machine
~/.murmurent/lab_info/	your machine (a registrar's machine, if you run one)	the centre-wide registry: every lab, core, and common SEA in the centre	the registrar
~/.murmurent/agents.log	your machine	the activity log the dashboard tails	you, per machine
your Obsidian personal-vault clone	your machine (or a synced folder, e.g. iCloud)	the working copy of murmurent_vault, what you actually read and edit in Obsidian	you
$MURMURENT_DATA_ROOT/immutable/, $MURMURENT_DATA_ROOT/append_only/	the lab server	bulk project data: immutable/ (read-only source data by convention) and append_only/ (append-only derived outputs); the legacy names raw/ and refined/ and the MURMURENT_LAB_VM_ROOT variable remain recognized, and murmurent data migrate renames an existing root	the lab; shared by every member

Public vs. private, per-machine vs. shared

Two repos are public: hallettmiket/murmurent (the commons code, meant to be read and cloned by anyone) and hallettmiket/murmurent_public (the directory of institutions running Murmurent). Every other GitHub repo above is private: a lab's governance repo grants read access only to that lab's members, and a personal vault grants access to no one but its owner.

Everything in your repositories folder, ~/.claude/, and ~/.murmurent/ lives on a single machine and gets set up fresh on each machine you use Murmurent from (see setup.md for per-machine wiring). The GitHub repos are what carry your Oracle, notebook, and lab knowledge between machines: clone the same private repos on a second laptop and Murmurent has the same state available there. The lab server's $MURMURENT_DATA_ROOT/{immutable,append_only}/ is shared infrastructure the whole lab points at, rather than something each machine keeps its own copy of.

This page consolidates what was previously split across setup.md's "What Murmurent installs on your machine" section and index.md's Repositories table.